After spinning out one half of its business this summer, Eleven Therapeutics is carving out the other half with $18 million to join companies like Arrowhead and Alnylam that are looking at small interfering RNA (siRNA) for diseases outside the liver.
Undecimal Bio will continue work on Eleven’s platform, which is designed to deliver siRNA to cell types other than ones found in the liver. Liver diseases are a typical fit for siRNA because drugmakers attach a sugar molecule called GalNAc to the siRNA, driving it to liver cells.
Undecimal’s seed funding will be used for its work on delivery molecules, such as conjugates, as well as therapeutic siRNA, CEO and co-founder Yaniv Erlich told Endpoints News in an interview. So far, the company has tested its platform, which it calls DELiveri, in a number of different cell lines and will continue to test it in primary human cells, he said.
A bonus to its platform is that it can be used for intravenous drug delivery, which opens it up to treat a wider range of diseases, Erlich said. Undecimal is looking to initially focus on renovascular diseases as available therapies address symptoms rather than the origin of the disease, according to the company.
The platform, when it was under Eleven, has already been tapped by some major drugmakers, including Novo for cardiometabolic diseases. Undecimal has several other research deals with pharma companies, but Erlich declined to name them. For future partnerships, Undecimal is looking to work with companies with expertise in a specific organ, Erlich said.
The seed funding will also roughly double the company’s UK team, which currently has a headcount of 11, Erlich said. Undecimal has laboratories based at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, with offices in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The oversubscribed funding round was co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital, with Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entree Capital, Kerna Ventures and Saras Capital also pitching in.
Erlich, Shaul Ilan and Greg Hannon founded Eleven in 2020. In July, it spun out ScionxBio, which is focused on making long-acting RNA for cardiometabolic indications and is led by Eleven’s former chief technology officer Adi Gilboa-Geffen. Ilan is Undecimal’s other co-founder.
“From a commercial perspective, we said, both of them are viable and both of them are serving different purposes so we decided to basically spin off two companies,” Erlich explained. With both Undecimal and ScionxBio being spun out, Eleven will cease to operate.
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